Hello everyone, 

I am planning on applying to certain alphabet soup govt institutions hoping to secure a position in clandestine services.

That being said, I started to research the polygraph test and surly enough stumbled upon this wonderful site. George, I read you're too hot story, and my heart really goes out to you. 

I am still young (mid 20's) and want to do this to help crub the tide of radicalism and maybe help refine the system to better catch terrorists in a social media age. 

So my intentions are pure, and I am a loyal, caring person. Now I wanted to really touch on the main point of this topic and it seems like reading hours and hours of material (from stories of individual tests, to watching documentaries, and reading on this forum) that the way to pass this test easily is to simply remain calm and know there is no way it can really read you're mind, and most importantly (despite if you really are lying are not) to lie on questions that are solely designed to mess you up, let the examiner dig deeper with questions and twist everything around in their devious ways.

To the best of my knowledge, the two main "alphabet soup" institutions, CIA and NSA, are both still mainly using the relevant/irrelevant technique, which you will find documented in Chapter 3 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

Good luck in the hiring process, if you choose to apply. I suggest you only access this site through a proxy like the Tor Browser Bundle.

The naivete of many on this site really disgusts me.
I'm sick and tired of posts from all these people who say they want to work for an intelligence agency because they are so patriotic, yet just don't want to take the polygraph.
When will these fools understand that the two are hopelessly intertwined?